Prior art recreational devices for permitting a person to fall from a predetermined high point down to a predetermined low point, are well known. Said devices, however, generally depend on the use of a slope, be it dry or provided with water for permitting the user to slip down along the same, although there are also a plurality of devices in which the users may jump and slip over a pipe of the type utilized by firemen. Up to the present time, however, with the only exception that will be described hereinbelow, there is no one single recreational device which may permit an absolutely free fall, that is, which may produce the thrill and sensation that the user is jumping into free space, inasmuch as most of the devices of the prior art are provided with means for permitting said falls without losing contact at any moment with a steady structure on which the users slip down. The sensation of a free fall is, as any psychologist may clearly affirm, absolutely different from a supported fall, whereby the thrill caused to the users by a free fall is of a totally distinct nature, and a device which may simulate an entirely free fall, may be very much more thrilling than those in which the falls are made in constant contact with a solid surface, or even than those in which the free fall is constantly arrested by the provision of elastic obstacles in the path of the falling user.
Up to the present time, no recreational device has been created in which the user may feel the sensation of an entirely free fall, although the device described and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,983, assigned to the same assignee hereof, may be regarded as constituting a breakthrough towards the provision of this entirely new type of thrill. The recreational device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,983, comprises a housing within which a plurality of elastic bands is randomly arranged through a predetermined substantial height of said housing to permit the users to attain the sensation of a free fall which is constantly arrested by the bands, said bands being arranged such that they form an elastic network leaving spans between the bands which are sufficiently small to prevent a person jumping from the deck from passing through the network all the way down without bouncing on one or more of the elastic bands but with the elastic bands having an elasticity sufficient to permit persons to rebound on them as they fall from a higher level of bands to a lower level of bands, and with said bands arranged throughout at least a substantial part of the height of the housing.
The device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,983, on the other hand, also shows an embodiment wherein certain part of the bands may be arranged in the form of a horizontal net fixed in a frame which may be moved upwardly or downwardly to enhance the "free fall effect" of the device.
The main embodiment of the device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,983, however, does not provide the accurate sensation of a free fall; since the array of the bands which are randomly distributed throughout a substantial height of the housing, does not permit the said free fall, because the same is constantly arrested when the person is falling down through said arrangement of elastic bands.
The second embodiment of the invention of U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,983, on the other hand, only provides movable horizontal beds of elastic bands in addition to randomly distributed individual bands and, although the free fall of the user from said horizontal movable bed of elastic bands onto the randomly distributed elastic bands indeed causes the sensation of an entirely free fall, the remainder of the ride is as described above in connection with the main embodiment of the invention. On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,983 does not suggest any means for compensating the remarkable differences in the impacts caused by differences in the height of fall and/or in the body weight of the prospective users, since said patent only describes a horizontal net of elastic bands in combination with the array of randomly distributed elastic bands, but without providing means to effect said impact differential compensation, which causes that heavy persons falling onto said movable bed of bands from considerable heights from the deck may deflect the individual bands of said bed to an extent which may be regarded as inadmissible.
On the other hand, the device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,535,983, at least throughout the height comprising said randomly distributed individual elastic bands, may cause problems of entanglement of the bands with the human body falling therethrough, because as said human body is encountering individual bands to arrest the free fall, it is not until a sufficient number of bands is gathered that said arresting action may be performed, with the consequence that bands caught by the user at upper levels, will be considerably stretched and possibly entangled with the bands caught at lower levels, with the additional risk of frequent ruptures at the bands laying at said higher levels.